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Announcing JISC eCollections

JISC Collections is formally launching the JISC eCollections service, developed to protect and preserve content investments made by JISC Collections on behalf of UK higher and further education institutions.

JISC Collections, the membership organisation that supports the provision of digital content for education and research in the UK, is formally launching a new service to consolidate and host a broad range of content including journal archives, historic books and multimedia items. The JISC eCollections service has been funded by JISC, to protect and preserve content investments made by JISC Collections on behalf of UK higher and further education institutions. The service comprises three platforms, developed in partnership with EDINA (JISC MediaHub) and Mimas (JISC Journal Archives and JISC Historic Books). Together they are intended to provide a sustainable, value for money alternative to accessing licensed content on publisher platforms.

Each platform contains a number of resources to which JISC Collections has previously negotiated long-term licences, along with some content that has never before been available online:

JISC Historic Books comprises full text or page images of over 350,000 books published in Britain from 1475 to 1900, including more than 65,000 historical editions from the British Library’s collection

JISC Journal Archives consolidates archives of over 600 journals, from publishers including Oxford University Press and Brill

JISC MediaHub enables users to discover over 500,000 multimedia items - moving images, still images and audio – both in JISC-licensed collections, such as those from the Digital Images for Education, NewsFilm Online and Film & Sound Online resources, and in third-party collections, such as ARKive and The First World War Poetry Archive.

JISC Collections members were previously required to access this content via a range of separate services, each with different user interfaces and administrative requirements. Consolidating each group of resources into one platform simplifies training and supports better discovery, enabling maximum value to be derived from the initial content investments. Administrative features include COUNTER statistics and inbound OpenURL linking for text content, and support for authentication via the UK Access Management Federation.

Institutions will pay a single service fee to support the cost of hosting and maintaining the platforms. Each platform will have an advisory board, comprising lecturers, information specialists, media advisors and technical experts from UK HE and FE, to ensure the service is managed by the community, for the community. “I am delighted to see JISC Collections’ commitment to provide continuing access to these important community resources via one service,” says Graham Stone, Information Resources Manager at the University of Huddersfield, and Chair of the JISC Journal Archives advisory board. “The JISC eCollections platforms are easy to use, and rationalising multiple resources into three consistent interfaces – integrated with our knowledge bases – helps us achieve our goal of providing users with a simple, seamless research experience.”

Further information

JISC eCollections (www.jiscecollections.ac.uk) consolidates and hosts more than £15m of journals, books and multimedia archives on behalf of UK education institutions. The service comprises three separate platforms, each of which contains a number of resources, such as Early English Books Online (part of JISC Historic Books, www.jischistoricbooks.ac.uk/), ITN News sources (part of JISC MediaHub, jiscmediahub.ac.uk/) or an individual publisher’s journal archive (part of JISC Journal Archives, www.jiscjournalarchives.ac.uk/). The platforms maximise usage of this content by increasing its visibility to end users and simplifying the user journey for each type of resource. Institutions can join for an annual service fee, which is ringfenced for reinvestment in the long-term maintenance and development of the service.

JISC Collections is a membership organisation, established by the UK Higher and Further Education funding councils, to support the procurement of digital content for education and research in the UK. We are uniquely placed to provide our members with:

expertise in negotiating and procurement, within the scholarly communications sector, to save librarians time and money

JISC inspires UK colleges and universities in the innovative use of digital technologies. We invest heavily in research and development, offering over 18 million users access to quality assured resources through our secure network. We provide expert advice, help to save money through national content license agreements and work with colleges and universities to realise the potential of their existing technologies. Everything we do has one aim - to maintain the UK's position as a global leader in education.

EDINA is a UK national academic data centre, designated by JISC on behalf of UK funding bodies to support the activity of universities, colleges and research institutes in the UK, by delivering access to a range of online data services through a UK academic infrastructure, as well as supporting knowledge exchange and ICT capacity building, nationally and internationally. EDINA seeks to enhance the productivity, quality and cost-effectiveness of research and education in the UK and beyond. EDINA innovates, generating knowledge, expertise and trust, through a focus on ease and continuity of access to scholarly resources and tools. EDINA is based at the University of Edinburgh. Together with the University Data Library, it is a division of Information Services.

Mimas is an organisation of experts. Its role is to support the advancement of knowledge, powering world-class research and teaching. Technology is at the heart of everything Mimas does. As a nationally designated data centre, Mimas hosts a significant number of the UK's research information assets – and builds applications to help people make the most of this rich resource. Based at The University of Manchester as a Centre of Excellence, Mimas benefits from collaboration with one of the UK's largest universities. Mimas has a longstanding relationship with JISC, developing services that support teaching, learning and research, and strong connections with research councils, especially the ESRC. Mimas also partners with commercial groups, universities and colleges, government agencies, and national libraries and archives.

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest research libraries. It provides world class information services to the academic, business, research and scientific communities and offers unparalleled access to the world's largest and most comprehensive research collection. The Library's collection has developed over 250 years and exceeds 150 million separate items representing every age of written civilisation and includes books, journals, manuscripts, maps, stamps, music, patents, photographs, newspapers and sound recordings in all written and spoken languages. Up to 10 million people visit the British Library website - www.bl.uk - every year where they can view up to 4 million digitised collection items and over 40 million pages.